


bottle it up, swallow it down, we'll never be the same again

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: Drug Use, Drugs, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 13:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had just entered high school when the Centre for the Rehabilitation of Human Emotion began peddling its wares.  Joy, Peace, Love, Hope, Empathy--all in liquid form for public consumption.  </p>
<p>Raylan Givens knows a thing or two about bottling emotions, but it will take a shoot out in his bedroom and the unraveling of Boyd Crowder to get a needle in his vein.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bottle it up, swallow it down, we'll never be the same again

**Author's Note:**

> The story was prompted by a particularly interesting [concept art series by Valerio Loi](http://zxcvfgdy.com/post/24544423628/human-feelings-as-drugs-since-this-small-and), and an [open channel call for fiction based on the art over at io9](http://io9.com/5920731/concept-art-writing-prompt-human-emotions-bottled-as-drugs).
> 
> I won't be posting there since this is a work of fanfiction and not original fiction, but I loved the prompt so much, I couldn't resist.
> 
> Thanks to engage_protocol for reading over it. <3

“You take a big dose of Joy or somethin’ this week, Raylan?”

That’s what Art had said, just three days before. No, Raylan had replied, he was just in a good mood. He didn’t say in Harlan, then and now, he saw what that shit did to people who took it too much, who disappeared behind their smiles and let the world pass them by. 

Joy, Peace, Love--all the working girls took Love, made things easier on them, but sometimes things got messy--Hope, too, though occasionally that shit worked out, gave people motivation. Empathy was a harder sell, less market for that.

They were just emotions, the media said when the drugs came out the year Raylan entered high school, natural as something synthetic can be. Emotions don’t have side effects.

Except your life can still be destroyed, your family too. Some people lost everything. No side effects, doesn’t mean no addiction.

And it wasn’t even like the other stuff, the meth and the oxy and everything else, wasn’t still available. That shit was cheaper now. If you couldn’t get the emotions, you could get something like it, something that still ravaged the body. If you ran out of money, you ran out of everything.

Doctors said, years later, some people who used it too much couldn’t get there on their own anymore. The drug companies made millions.

Most people knew now, they knew how to take it, when to not. They knew the dangers, the risks, and how to stop if things got out of hand. If you had money, you had a therapist prescribe to you, or support groups if you ignored your therapist. If you didn’t, you spent it as you could and tried to self-medicate, self-emote, Raylan supposed.

He’d never touched the shit. He didn’t need the emotions he had, didn’t want anything fake--though apologists called it natural all damn day ‘til you closed your ears to it--and he didn’t want any more either, or anything that wasn’t straight from him. He got tired of justifying it to people.

So he’d smiled at Art and said, no, he’d just had a good week.

 

“I took Love,” Winona was telling him now, regret and uncertainty in her expression, shadowed by the dim light of his room. She was on the bed next to him and it took all he had not to move away from her.

He was numb, he wasn’t feeling anything, he’d swear a polygraph. “When?”

She looked away. “It was supposed to be for Gary. To rekindle...whatever. It... didn’t do what I expected.”

“It never does,” he said with a heavy sigh. He put his hands across his eyes, slid them down his face. “You still didn’t tell me when.”

“Weeks ago,” she said. “It was... slow release. An extended dose. I got it from a friend, used to be in marriage counseling.”

Raylan laughed, wondering if they’d ever thought to bottle irony. Hipsters would love that shit.

He looked at her. “You know I’m gonna ask you to leave now. You know how I feel about that shit.”

Her lip stiffened and she held herself straighter. He always thought she was beautiful when she was proud, “Raylan, I don’t know if I--”

“Save it,” he said. “I’m done.”

She left without a word.

She knew he hated that shit. She’d said in Salt Lake, in Glynco too, they’d never need it. He was sure she’d never tried, even at the end. It was why he knew he could let go, back in Miami, even though he really never had.

It didn’t hurt any less this time, but he thought he’d hid it better. Until Art thrust something into his hand, at the end of the day maybe a week later.

“You look like shit,” he said with a sincere look of concern. “Sometimes, it just helps, okay?”

It was a vial of Peace.

Raylan didn’t even have a needle. He bought some, later, they were cheap anyway. But he had second, third, and fourth thoughts, then thrust the whole deal into a drawer and fucking forgot about it. He didn’t need it.

He went to sleep on booze and exhaustion, he wouldn’t settle for anything else. Not until Arlo came to Lexington, with Bo Crowder’s orders and the federal Government’s money in his pocket.

As a Marshal, Raylan kept a bottle of Empathy on his person at all times. His gun could fire it, if it was loaded properly. Not a lot of shitkickers knew that. Arlo certainly didn’t.

He shot him in the leg, twice just to be sure, and it was the most surreal experience of Raylan’s life.

The Marshals, the DEA and FBI too, used the fast acting stuff. Usually it took days, if you wanted it to seem natural, if you didn’t want to know it was happening. But this, it came over the man, that hard, unyielding face, in an instant.

Raylan had seen this before in criminals in the field. They get shot with it and they realize, just all at once, “ _Shit_ , this is against the law. You don’t want me to be doing this. I’m just gonna stop, right now.” And then it’s over.

And that’s what happened with Arlo. He looked at Raylan with big eyes, like he’d never understand what he’d been thinking only minutes before and said, “I was... they were... I was gonna to kill you.”

“I know,” Raylan ground out. Reloading with bullets, he shot the two coming through the door. Arlo just blinked at him as he called for the ambulance and coroner. 

“You don’t want me here,” Arlo stated when he was done, like that was important, like it was something he’d ever consider.

“Never do,” Raylan replied.

“I’ll go away, then.” He looked high as a kite, attentive as hell, just on Raylan. It was unnerving.

“No, you won’t,” Raylan said. “You’re staying. You’re gonna sit right there and you’re gonna tell me everything you know about Bo Crowder’s plans.”

Arlo spilled it all and Raylan called Art and fifteen minutes later Tom Bergen called Raylan to say Bo, Johnny, and two others were in custody at Ava’s and Ava herself was just fine. 

Just as Raylan clicked his phone shut, he heard footsteps at the door, he was sure. He crouched down by the bed, his weaponless hand splayed out at his father, warning him away. 

An empathetic witness was dangerous as hell. Depending on the goals of anyone else in the room, they were a suicidal ally or a homicidal enemy. It all depended on proximity and natural empathy and it was hard to predict.

“Go in the bathroom, and shut the door,” Raylan ordered quietly. “Don’t come out ‘til I say.”

And Arlo went. Just like that.

Raylan shouldn’t have been surprised it was Boyd who came in, quiet as a church mouse and looking down at his feet like he’d never seen a dead body before. “Dear Lord,” he murmured.

He looked like shit, beat to hell and weighed down by something that looked very much like despair.

“Boyd, what are you doin’ here?” Raylan asked 

He answered so softly, Raylan almost didn’t hear him. “I-I’m lost, Raylan.” He looked like he was about to fall over.

“What the hell does that mean?” 

Raylan had wondered for a while, if he wasn’t lying about it all, how close Boyd was to the edge of something bad, teetering on a precipice of faith-fueled insanity. He felt a strange tightening in his chest. He wanted Boyd to be trying to trick him right now.

“I led my flock to slaughter,” Boyd breathed, pain evident in his features.

“I’m not following, Boyd,” Raylan said slowly, wrapping his fingers tight around his gun. He wished he’d thought to reload with the Empathy. If Boyd did fall farther than Raylan had ever expected, at least he wouldn’t have to shoot him again with a bullet when things went sideways. 

“My daddy, he-he killed all my men, Raylan.” And that tightness in Raylan eased just a little. Boyd sat heavily on the bed. “He killed them all.”

Raylan looked down at him, long and hard, and holstered his gun. Boyd lifted his eyes to meet Raylan’s. “Saw your daddy’s truck outside,” Boyd said. “He still here?”

“He’s in the bathroom. Told him to stay put.” Raylan dragged a hand across his face, still searching Boyd’s features.

“He listened to you?” 

Raylan smiled, too tired to laugh. “Shot him up with Empathy a little while ago.” Raylan tapped his gun with a finger and explained at Boyd’s blank look, “This thing’s got a second barrel, second trigger, too. Marshals, other Federals, use it in the field on occasion.”

Boyd’s eyes grew round. “I thought that was just for TV.”

“So do a lot of people.”

“He was workin’ with my daddy? Sent these men after you?” Boyd seemed to be grasping at anything to ask, maybe not to have to think about those men. Raylan remembered some of their faces, all in a flash, others were just a blur. There had been a lot of them, at least fifteen, all of them believing in Boyd. Christ.

“He was,” Raylan replied. “You might be glad to hear, ‘cause of the Empathy, Arlo gave up your daddy. Staties got to him at Ava’s. He and his men are all in custody. He’ll go to jail for a long time on account of your men.”

“My men,” Boyd repeated, gazing off at nothing in the distance, lost, like he’d said. “Oh, God,” he doubled over and dry heaved something close to a sob. 

Raylan just stared at him. “Boyd, I--”

He recovered in an instant, lifting his head, shaking it minutely as he said, “I'm sorry, Raylan. You asked me what I'm doing here and truth be told, I don't know myself. I... it could be this is where my feet took me because, in my heart, I count you as the only friend I have left in this world."

Raylan said nothing, but found his breath hard to catch. It was difficult, he supposed, having never done it before, to watch a man's life unravel right in front of you.

“I know--I _do_ know that I have very little right--none at all perhaps--to ask anything of you now. Even,” he’d begun to ramble, speaking fast and brokenly, “even if you had anything to give--”

Raylan raised his hand, remembering, and interrupted, going to the drawer in his bedside table. “Shut up, Boyd, for just a minute,” he said.

Boyd blinked, looking away and standing. “You’re right, Raylan, I apologize, I should--”

“No,” Raylan insisted. “I do have something I can give you. Come here.” Raylan extended his hand, revealing what he’d taken from the drawer, a small, bright-blue vial and an unopened 3-pack of hypodermic needles. “Peace,” Raylan said softly. “I can give you Peace.”

Boyd stared at what Raylan was offering, coming close, close enough to touch, close enough that Raylan could feel each breath that was forced from his lungs. They were coming slow and ragged. From the blood and bruises on his face, Boyd had taken a beating that day, it could be he had a cracked rib or two. What the man really needed was a hospital, but Raylan thought maybe they’d take this a step at a time.

“Temptation,” Boyd said to Raylan’s hand. “Peace with the Lord is the only true p--” but he cut himself off there and closed his eyes. “I don’t know, Raylan,” he whispered. “You take it?”

Raylan shook his head. “A friend gave it to me. Thought I needed it. Maybe--maybe I did, but I didn’t take it. I’ve never touched the stuff.”

“Me either,” Boyd said, still watching it, like it was going to sprout legs and run out the door at any second.

It was then that the paramedics came in. Raylan hid the vial behind his back and directed them to the bathroom where Arlo was still holed up.

“Okay, I’ll come with you,” the old man said as he walked out the door accompanied by two men. They’d take him to the hospital and watch over him until the dosages wore off. 

Two from a dart gun could be a lot for some people, it was just easier to keep observation and anyway, Raylan was sure someone would be by to take a statement while he was under the influence. It wouldn’t be admissible in court, on account of self-incrimination, but it would point them in some new directions to look for evidence.

Boyd sat down on the bed while Raylan walked through the crime scene with the tech guys. Art was down in Harlan, along with Tim and Rachel, so he had charge of the area. The incident was a small one, well, closely contained anyway, for all two men died, so it didn’t take long.

A half hour later, with the room emptied of live men and bodies, he turned to Boyd and said, “The scene is closed for tonight, but they’ll be combing over this place for another day, at least. So, even I can’t sleep here. Why don’t I get you a room? You ain’t gonna want to go far, if you’re going to...” He put his hand in his pocket, where he knew Boyd had seen him slip the vial. “Do you want to?”

“Yes,” he said almost too quickly, then looked away, not meeting Raylan’s eyes. “What I mean to say is, that sounds like a fine plan.”

Raylan knew Boyd had no money. He didn’t even ask. When they got to the room, ironically just next door to the crime scene, Raylan set down his keys and hat on the table and said, “Take off your jacket, Boyd.”

He pulled the vial out and set it down too, and the needles just beside it.

Boyd grunted, just softly, as he tried to work off his coat. But it was tight fitting and Raylan saw he’d be struggling for a while. “Stop,” he told him and Boyd looked up. 

As Raylan moved to help him, for some reason he didn’t care to fathom, he began to talk. “I caught my mother with a vial of Love once,” he said, working Boyd’s arm out of the first sleeve. The coat was filthy, covered in dried blood and caked-on dirt. Raylan realized Boyd must have buried those men. He felt a flash of regret they’d have to dig them all up again. “She had it tucked in her hand, trying to hide it from me, but I saw what it was,” he continued. “Must have got it from someone up in Noble’s Holler, the last time she was there--that I knew of, anyway.”

“I heard she went back a few times after you skipped town,” Boyd said, tilting his head, trying to meet Raylan’s eyes. “Did it help her at all?”

“I never asked. I hated the idea so much, I--” Raylan didn’t have the words. “I don’t know what she sold to get it. That shit was dear at the time, ‘specially in Harlan. I swore... after that, I swore I’d never use it.”

“It just doesn’t seem right if it’s not coming from you. The emotions, I mean,” Boyd mused. “That’s how I always felt. Though, I can’t rightly say I ever felt such a thing as love, not the way people describe it, or the way they tell you on the commercials.” His coat was off now, and Raylan draped it over a chair. Boyd sat down on the bed, heavily, like his legs were about to give.

“You ever known peace?” Raylan asked with a half-hearted smile.

Boyd furrowed his brows, really thinking about it, and his eyes returned to that middle distance, off in the room. Raylan wished he hadn’t asked. “I must have,” Boyd replied. “Though, right now, I’m unable to recall.” He looked again at Raylan and smiled. “That, too, can be very dear in Harlan.”

“Boyd, are you sure?” Raylan wasn’t. He wasn’t half as sure as he wanted to be, and he wasn’t even the one taking it. He felt like a drug pusher. He felt like he was somehow taking advantage.

Boyd nodded. “It’s this or falling to drink, Raylan. And right now, I think I’d drink myself dead, I want this feeling gone so bad,” he said, rolling up his sleeve.

It won’t be gone, Raylan wanted to say. It’ll just be masked, muted. It will come back and you’ll feel worse. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he replied instead, turning for the door.

“No.” And there was something terribly afraid in Boyd’s voice as he spoke. It stopped Raylan in his tracks. “Give it to me, Raylan, please,” Boyd begged, his eyes wide open and raw. “A gift, that’s what you said. I can’t--I can’t give myself _peace_.”

A gift. Raylan had said that. He looked at Boyd and was again unable to catch his breath. The man seemed on the verge of panic, of the madness that was hidden in his eyes in the moments after he’d walked through Raylan’s door and waded through those bodies like they were going to burn him.

Raylan took the vial off the table, broke open the plastic covering the needles. “Take off your shoes,” he said and Boyd heaved a sigh, moving immediately to obey. 

Raylan sat down on the bed, made fresh for a new guest, and measured out 20 milliliters into the needle. He knew this was a fast acting variety--Art wouldn’t have given it to him otherwise, since law enforcement couldn’t be on any long term Emotional dosages without a prescription and notification of their co-workers--so he’d need a good amount to get the desired effect.

Boyd watched him measure it out with rapt attention. The liquid sped through the needle and up into the barrel, filling it with that crystalline blue. It was a unique color, Raylan had read once, not found in nature. You could buy paint in the same shade these days.

When he’d filled it to the right line, Raylan reached across Boyd to set the vial down on the bedside table, right under the low, yellow, light of the lamp, then leaned back, swiftly. He thought about how strange it felt to not think of Boyd as a threat, then he realized strange wasn’t quite the word. He felt out of practice.

Raylan looked into Boyd’s eyes again and ached from the sadness he saw there. “You were tellin’ the truth, weren’t you?” he blurted. “Your conversion.”

Boyd blinked at him. “Was I?”

Raylan’s mouth hung open for a moment, then he took Boyd’s arm in his hand. His skin felt warm, vital. Raylan shook his head, in a mute apology and asked, “Are you ready?”

“Please,” Boyd whispered and Raylan slipped the needle into his vein, pressed down steady on the plunger.

Boyd closed his eyes. The arm Raylan still held gave a tiny shudder that seemed to flow up and through the rest of him, but a moment later, he was smiling. It was a soft smile, one Raylan was sure he’d ever seen on Boyd’s face before. 

Boyd blinked again, slow this time, and looked at Raylan. His eyes were soft, too, but they didn’t look vague, and they weren’t dilated wide. He just looked like he thought it was kind of nice to be looking at Raylan. “Do you believe in God, Raylan?” he asked.

“Why don’t you lie down, Boyd?” Raylan suggested, watching him carefully. He got up from the bed, set the needle down next to the vial.

Boyd’s smile grew just a little wider, almost indulgent, and he obliged before asking again, “Do you?”

Raylan huffed and frowned at him. Emotions affected people differently. They’d been drilled that at Glynco regarding the Empathy. Real emotions were different for every person, so the synthetic ones worked the same way. Apparently, a Peaceful Boyd still thought about God.

Raylan didn’t want to be disagreeable. He wasn’t even sure what he was still doing there. “I do,” he answered, barely thinking about it.

“Tell me about your God,” Boyd said, settling down into the blankets, his head sinking into the pillow. He scooted over a little, in a slow, leisurely way, so Raylan could sit on the bed beside him. “Please.”

Raylan wanted to refuse. He didn’t want to be there anymore. But the thought of going now, of leaving Boyd in this state, to wake up eventually to a pain for which he may no longer be prepared, turned his stomach, twisted that ache in his chest to something painful and guilt-ridden.

So, he shrugged, sitting down where Boyd bid, and answered, “You know, long beard, white hair, sits on a heavenly throne.”

Boyd’s smile changed subtly now, and maybe, if he wasn’t feeling so Peaceful, would have laughed. The expression was almost fond and Raylan wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. “ _My_ God,” he began, but Raylan didn’t want to hear that.

He put a hand on Boyd’s stomach, trying to be careful of his ribs, and Boyd’s lips parted in slow surprise, though of course he wouldn’t seem angry. “Tell me what it feels like,” Raylan prompted.

Boyd grinned now, and it was loose and looked good on him, like it had when they were young. He tilted his head, mussing up his hair even more against the pillow. His eyes were blinking a little slower now and his limbs seemed heavy. Raylan thought the Peace must have made it all the way through his blood stream by now, filling him up, really kicking in hard.

“You ‘member the night we drove up the mountain, ‘cause you didn’t want to go home?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“An’ we drank that half jar of ‘shine, ‘cause that was all I had and we didn’t even get drunk. Just looked up at the stars for all that time, ‘til we couldn’t look no more an’ just fell asleep in the bed of my truck?”

“Yes, Boyd, I remember,” Raylan said softly.

Boyd put his hand over Raylan’s and he was still smiling, like none of the time had passed at all. “It feels like that,” he told him. “It feels _just_ like that, Raylan.”

“Shit,” Raylan breathed and Boyd did laugh at him now, so softly.

“You should take the rest,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“What?”

“Oh, Raylan,” Boyd said, smoothing his fingers lightly over Raylan’s, almost like he was trying to soothe him. “You ain’t known no peace. Not like that. Not since we looked at the stars.”

Raylan was still. He pulled his hand away. “You don’t know that,” he said, knowing it was a lie. Even with Winona, there had never been any room for peace. Not like that night.

Boyd didn’t seem to mind his fingers were empty now. He just looked at Raylan, smile so sweet, eyes very dark in the shadows made by the lamp, but still clear, still him. “You think I can’t tell?”

“There’s only ten mils left,” Raylan told him. The vial was just thirty. “It won’t feel the same for me.”

“Even I know that’s bullshit,” Boyd replied with no venom at all. “It just won’t last as long.”

“Everybody’s different,” he tried. “It still might not be the same.”

Boyd touched his arm. No, he was pulling at his shirt sleeve. “I bet you it will.” When Raylan tore his arm away, Boyd didn’t fight him. He just smiled again, so understanding, so very like that night. “Go back there with me, Raylan.”

“Why do you care?” he asked quietly. He wasn’t tempted. That was never what he wanted.

He lifted a hand and his fingers came around the back of Raylan’s neck, sliding across sensitive skin effortlessly and certainly, like it was something he’d do all the time. Raylan found he couldn’t fight it as Boyd pulled him close, leaning up just a little to speak. “You gave this to me, my friend. It’s only right I give it back to you. And, I want you here with me.”

He let go and Raylan picked up the vial.

He turned it over and over in his hands, read the label several times before he spoke it aloud, “ _Peace is a state of mental and spiritual serenity and calmness_.”

“Peace is liberty in tranquility,” Boyd replied. “That’s Cicero.”

Raylan gave him a look.

Boyd just laughed again, that soft one from before and told him, “I saw that on an inspirational poster, once.”

"Quit being an asshole," Raylan said.

"Only if you quit being a pussy." Again, there was little strong feeling behind the words he said, no emphasis, just a strange confidence, a certainty, and the echoes of that laugh. "Are you afraid of the past, Raylan?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation. "I let the past put us on this path. I did that when I couldn't kill you."

"I won't tell you I ain't grateful."

"I never asked you to do that,” Raylan said, shaking his head. “I didn't want to be your savior. Then or now. But I... thought about the mine, right before I pulled, and I missed. You were right there. I couldn't let go of what you’d done for me, who you were, and then all this happened." 

He should never have done this. Raylan realized that now. What a mistake he’d made. The vial was still in his hands. It didn’t feel so cold now. He’d warmed it up with his touch.

"Leave all that, Raylan," Boyd said then, so calm, so insistent. Raylan closed his eyes. "Leave it right here and come back with me."

Raylan picked up one of the other needles and sucked all that shit up into it. Raylan stuck it between his teeth, like he'd seen a junkie in Miami do once, and rolled up his sleeve. Boyd watched him, riveted once again, expression nothing but watchful. 

When Raylan had the tip, cold and sharp, pressed up to his vein, he looked at Boyd and said, "Goddammit son, I swear, next time we're just going to get drunk, all right?"

Boyd smiled and Raylan pushed down.

It rushed into him slow, if that was possible, and creeped up fast. It was cold, like that blue color, then warm all at once. He fell back with the force of it, but seemed to float down on top of Boyd's legs.

Boyd. Jesus. Raylan smiled. He rolled over and Boyd made room for him, like in the truck.

"I didn't want to go home because Mama had the Love she got," Raylan said after a few minutes and talking seemed easy, right. Everything felt fine and even thinking about it didn't hurt. "You never asked, but I wanted to tell you. You always understood. You always seemed to know."

Boyd's smile was the same as before, but Raylan liked it a lot more now. "You're not hard to read, Raylan," he said. "And you look real nice when you smile like that."

"You still look like shit," Raylan said without thinking. "Your daddy leave those marks on you?"

Boyd shrugged. "He had Johnny do it." 

He winced when Raylan touched his lip, just close to where it was split. "I should have got you something, cleaned you up."

"You got me something real good," Boyd said. "The rest can wait for after."

"After," Raylan mused with no trepidation. "Wonder what that'll be like."

Boyd smiled and Raylan grinned. "Leave it for now, like the rest," Boyd told him. He looked into Raylan's eyes and asked, "Can you see the stars, Raylan?"

"Yeah, Boyd," he replied feeling them settle around him, wrap him up tight and warm. "I can."


End file.
